


Wash, Rinse, Repeat

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Anyway This Was Giving Me Fits So, But it's okay, Comedy, Dumps Fic at You and Runs Away, Everyone is Dead, God I Hope the Redemption Arc is Well Done, It's the Premise of the Show, Multi, So Many Good Place Quotes, Straight-Up Comedy Here, This Might Be the Closest Thing to Crack I've Ever Done, Wyatt Logan Redemption Arc, Wyatt Logan's Bisexuality Crisis, i had fun with this, so many, the good place AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 20:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19342405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: Wyatt’s pretty damn sure that when people have to put up a sign that says "Welcome! Everything is fine!" that things are… not fine.





	Wash, Rinse, Repeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoodbyeYellowBrickRoad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodbyeYellowBrickRoad/gifts).



> For Maggie, who deserves a gift.

Wyatt Logan is not a good person.

Which is why the moment he’s called into a very nice office and sits down in front of a stern but kind looking man who calls himself Mason and tells him he’s died and gone to ‘The Good Place’, he knows something screwy is going on.

Because, uh, if he has in fact died… he’s pretty sure whatever this ‘Good Place’ is, he’s supposed to be in the, um, opposite area.

But just to be clear? Wyatt’s pretty damn sure that when people have to put up a sign that says _Welcome! Everything is fine!_ that things are… not fine.

Just. Y’know. If anyone in charge is taking suggestions on lobby décor.

“Come with me,” Mason says, all affable British charm. “I want to show you your dream home!”

“Ah, uh, thanks?” Wyatt clears his throat. “Y’know you really… don’t have to…”

“Oh, but I must!” Mason is beaming. “This is my first neighborhood you know, I’m quite excited about it. And after all you did down on Earth… diving in front of bombs to save puppies, feeding starving children in Cambodia, leading a protest against plastic fishing nets… it’s the least I can do.”

Wyatt definitely has not done any of those things.

In fact, Wyatt’s life is a good study in White Trash, if he’s being honest.

But this guy, Mason, the Architect, is convinced that Wyatt is this _other_ Wyatt who was apparently this saint, and, well… this Bad Place? It doesn’t sound so hot.

“Question,” Wyatt asks, as Mason leads him to his neighborhood (apparently there are a bunch of neighborhoods in the Good Place, so that there’s no overcrowding and people with harmonious personalities can live together), “how did I die? I don’t, uh, remember it.”

“Oh, you were hit by a shopping cart,” Mason says. “In the grocery store parking lot. After you bought some margarita mix.”

Okay, that sounds more like him. His drinking was never his best quality but it’s gotten worse since Jess divorced him.

“The carts sent you flying right into the path of a large truck which was, fun fact, being driven by one of your exes—”

“Ah, great! I think that’s all the detail I need!” Hoo boy.

“And here it is!” Mason beams proudly. “Your dream house, made to fit your exact desires and specifications.”

Wyatt points at the house—sorry, _mansion_ —next door. “Is that why I don’t get one of those?”

“Exactly! You’re so humble, you would never want a big, fancy, technologically-advanced house like that with a full waitstaff.”

Wyatt grits his teeth. “Nope. I definitely would never want that. With servants to do whatever I needed… and huge flat screen televisions… and a big house with a ton of beds for jumping on… nope, no, would never want that. Who _would_ want that, right?”

“That’s the spirit!” Mason says, and he leads Wyatt inside.

Um.

His house has pictures of clowns all over it.

What? Seriously, _what?_

“Your bedroom is right through there,” Mason says. “Oh, and…”

The doorbell rights.

“Right on time!” Mason goes to open it. “I was just about to tell you about—your soulmate!”

“I have a soulmate?” No offense but after his marriage to his high school sweetheart fell apart, Wyatt kind of stopped believing in soulmates. And love. And everything.

Mason opens the door and in steps a petite brunette, with sharp cheekbones, an angled face, and bright, dark eyes.

Her smile is like sunshine.

“Hi.” She waves a little awkwardly. “I’m Lucy.”

“Hey.” Wyatt goes in for a handshake, she goes in for a hug, and it’s about two seconds of awkward dancing before they settle for a weird one-armed-hug-thing. “Nice to meet you.”

“Well.” Mason claps his hands together. “I’ll leave you lovebirds to it, shall we? Toodles!”

…who actually says ‘toodles’ anymore?

Wyatt plasters a smile onto his face. “So, Lucy, what do you um—sorry what _did_ you do, on earth?”

“Oh!” Lucy brightens up at once. “I was a moral ethics professor.”

“…holy fork you are a God send.”

Wait.

“Sorry, I meant to say fork. What the fork? Why can’t I say fork!?”

“Ah.” Lucy nods. “Um, swearing is banned here. Some people don’t like it.”

“Well that’s bullshirt,” Wyatt mumbles. “Look, um, Lucy. I know that we just met. But you’re my soulmate, right? So I need your help.”

“Okay.” Lucy smiles, eager, ready.

“…I’m not supposed to be here.”

 

* * *

 

So, fun fact about his soulmate?

She tends to monologue.

And she has a _really_ hard time making decisions.

Wyatt has been sitting here for forty-five minutes while Lucy paces back and forth and weighs the pros and cons and moral implications of keeping his secret and tutoring him in how to be a good person who belongs in, well, a Good Place.

“Think of it this way,” he tells her, “this will be the biggest, best ethics project that you could ever ask for! It’s like your PhD thesis.”

The glare that Lucy gives him could melt a wall of concrete. “I will think about it.”

“Perfect!” Wyatt jumps to his feet. “I knew I could count on you.”

“No, you didn’t, we just met.”

Wyatt shrugs. “Wearing women down is kind of my specialty.”

Lucy closes her eyes, takes a very deep breath, touches her fingers to her mouth, and then opens her eyes again. “Okay. Okay. So we are literally starting from ground zero. I am literally house training a puppy. This is… this is fine.”

“…how am I a puppy.”

Lucy mutters something that sounds like ‘understanding consent’ but then there’s the sound of…

Mowing?

Wyatt opens his front door to ask whoever it is making that racket to turn it the fork down when he sees who is actually making said racket.

It’s a guy with a mower on the lawn next door—y’know, the forking gigantic gorgeous house that Wyatt is definitely not at all envious over—and he’s mowing the lawn in a black tank top that’s sticking to his very broad, muscled chest, and he’s got dark hair flopping into his eyes a little and sunglasses and and and—

“What!?” Wyatt is—appalled, yes, he is appalled, angered, offended, scandalized. “That’s my next-door neighbor!?”

“Apparently,” Lucy says, in a tone that makes her sound like a squirrel that just found the best tree to climb in the entire state park.

“Why is he—what!? _What!?_ Why is he that hot?” Wyatt gestures wildly. “I mean—come on. Come _on_. Look at that. That makes me look—okay I am a seven, all right, I am a solid seven and that—that _person_ makes me look like a four!”

Lucy squints at Flynn, then slowly, as if on a pivot, turns and looks at Wyatt. “Wyatt,” she says, conversationally, like she’s about to ask him what color he thinks the sky is, “one tiny, little, odd random question. Are you sure you’re straight?”

 

* * *

 

His next-door neighbor is named Garcia Flynn. He is insufferable.

Lucy, of course, likes him immediately.

“Did you hear he’s from Croatia!?” she gushes the moment Flynn is out of earshot, after he’s invited them oh so politely to his party that evening to ‘welcome everyone to the neighborhood’. “Did you hear his accent!? Did you hear he’s raised over a billion dollars for charity!?”

“Yes. I heard all of that. Multiple times. He also mentioned his godmother, Princess Diana, his best friend, Taylor Swift, and his other best friend, Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.”

Lucy looks like she might actually swoon.

Wyatt wants to smash a table over Flynn’s head.

“We have to go to his party tonight,” Lucy says. “The whole neighborhood will be there!”

“Yippee.” If the rest of the neighborhood is like Flynn, Wyatt doesn’t want to meet them.

At the party, Wyatt gets a little… a little…

“You’re an alcoholic too,” Lucy hisses. “Great! Fantastic! My soulmate is a walking bundle of toxic white masculinity wrapped up in an alcoholic package and with a good dose of internalized homophobia for measure!”

“I’m not homophobic!” Wyatt says, maybe just a touch too loudly.

“You were very rude when you thought he and Rufus were romantic soulmates instead of platonic ones.”

“I just said I wouldn’t want to suck his duck!” He frowns. “Duck. _Duck_. Oh for fork’s sake.”

“Everything okay here?” Rufus asks.

Wyatt actually does like Rufus. Rufus is great. Rufus is a geek and fun and makes good jokes and let Wyatt steal all the shrampies and hide them in his pants.

Lucy sighs. “We’re fine, I think Wyatt’s had just a little too much, so I’m taking him home.”

“Look, look, I can do Flynn’s accent, ready?” He clears his throat. “Haaaiii, I’m Flynn, I ehm a vury tall pretentious yet elegant giraffe.”

Lucy claps a hand over his mouth. “I think that’s enough from you. Goodnight Rufus!”

Lucy bundles him into bed, grumbling the entire time, and that’s when Wyatt starts to feel a little pang of… remorse.

He’s not used to remorse. But he’s pretty sure this sick feeling in his stomach is it.

“Lucy?”

Lucy sighs, pauses in putting his clothes in the laundry hamper, and then turns to face him. “Yes, Wyatt?”

“I’m sorry. You’re… I ruined your night. And you’re putting yourself on the line for me. So. Thank you. I’m sorry.”

Lucy nods. “Well. You’ll do better tomorrow, right?”

“Right.”

 

* * *

 

Tomorrow is forked.

Wyatt wakes up to find the entire world is going crazy. Giant shrampies are flying outside the window. There are huge giraffes wandering around. Everyone is dressed like—

“I am dressed,” Lucy growls, “ _exactly_ like Jake Gyllenhaal in _Brokeback Mountain_! I think I can safely say you have some long standing issues with your sexuality!”

“This is not because of me!” Wyatt shouts. “You can’t prove that this is me!”

“THERE ARE GIANT GIRAFFES OUTSIDE THE WINDOW!” Lucy shouts back. “YOU CALLED FLYNN A PRETENTIOUS YET ELEGANT GIRAFFE!”

“…okay fair but WAS I WRONG!?”

Mason, thank God, blames himself, since he’s a brand-new architect. He summons Jiya to help clean up the mess.

Jiya is not a girl, and not a robot, as she helpfully reminds everyone, although she is perfectly happy with she/her pronouns. She is the informational assistant at the Good Place, a walking database. She knows everything about everything. Like when Wyatt asked her if Kate Drummond from Manchester Township, New Jersey, was gay.

“Nope!” Jiya replied.

“Huh. I guess she really didn’t want to have sex with me.”

“That is correct.”

“Well, that’s fine, I wasn’t into her anyway.”

“Yes, you were.”

Wyatt has been trying to avoid Jiya ever since.

But if there’s one thing that this mess has taught him, it’s that he has to get serious about being a good person. As Lucy points out, if Wyatt does selfish things, malicious things, then it forks with the Good Place system.

And it could out him.

So he starts getting serious about, well, school.

There are some bumps in the road.

“What does it even matter?” he groans, rubbing his temples. “Who died and left Aristotle in charge of philosophy?”

Lucy stares at him disbelievingly for a beat, then points at her chalkboard. “Plato.”

There’s another bump in the road when Rufus admits that he knows Wyatt doesn’t belong here. “You confessed it to me while you were drunk at the party that first night, man. Also have you considered AA?”

He has. In fact, Lucy had Jiya fetch him a copy of the AA handbook and Wyatt is supposed to follow all the steps and do them with Lucy on Tuesday nights.

He suspects Lucy gets off on ordering him around.

Rufus, thank God, doesn’t mind. He doesn’t belong in the Good Place either. “Mason said that I was some poor kid from the slums, and also from Cameroon? I’m from Detroit. This is racist. Heaven is racist!”

Oh, and then there’s the small teeny tiny problem of Rufus and Jiya falling in love.

So, apparently, when you are, say, an architect named Mason, and you let your assistant reboot themselves 802 times, that assistant starts to develop a personality and thoughts of their own.

Jiya decides that as a part of her developing personality, she is in love with Rufus.

This is a bit of a problem, as one can imagine. Mason is… perplexed, to say the least.

Oh, and another bump? Flynn somehow ends up befriending them.

This is in spite of every effort on Wyatt’s part.

Flynn gifts him with a plant—a tiny flowering little tree—and Wyatt, ah, accidentally sets it on fire by talking smack about Flynn.

Flynn takes Wyatt out to meet the neighbors. Wyatt runs smack into a tree when Flynn bends over to pick up one of the muffins (homemade muffins, he made _homemade muffins_ , what the fork, who does that?) that fell out of his individually made gift baskets for all the neighbors.

Flynn boops Wyatt on the nose, overhears Lucy call him ‘puppy’ and starts calling Wyatt that constantly, tells Wyatt he should wear more blue, it brings out his eyes, and insists that Wyatt must learn how to dance (apparently Flynn learned how to dance from Rita Moreno, so, fork him).

He once told Wyatt that ‘Garcia’ meant ‘Congratulations’ in Spanish (it doesn’t) and that the root meaning of the word ‘Flynn’ is ‘beautiful’ (it isn’t) so that his name means…

“Congratulations, beautiful,” Wyatt said.

“Aww, thanks Wyatt, you big flirt,” was Flynn’s response.

Then he booped him on the nose again.

It made Wyatt’s stomach go all… melty.

Wyatt has no clue how to get rid of the guy and the terrifying part is that he’s not even sure that he wants to. Flynn name drops, thinks only about himself, is a narcissistic insecure monster with a forkton of big brother and daddy issues, and hasn’t met a single social situation that he can’t turn into an over-the-top event.

But he’s also gorgeous, and hilarious, and sexy, and genuinely thinks Wyatt is his friend, and handsome, and cries to Wyatt one day because he wants to be a good friend to Rufus and feels like he’s failing, and he’s got a jawline to die for, and he gifts Wyatt a bunch of nice clothes, and he’s got eyes you could just drown in, and…

Um. Anyway.

Point is. Flynn isn’t perfect. But he cares about Wyatt, for some reason, and Wyatt—Wyatt is starting to care back.

And then—then there’s Lucy.

Lucy who makes him read _Why Did He Do That?_ by Lundy Bancroft. Lucy who explains Kant over and over and over no matter how many times Wyatt asks her to repeat it. Lucy who keeps his secret and pretends to be his loving soulmate in public, kissing his cheek, holding his hand, praising him (and Wyatt—Wyatt flexes his hand when he’s inside his home and Lucy lets go, he touches his cheek and feels the warmth of her, the smell of her strawberry shampoo, and he doesn’t—he doesn’t want it to be fake because it doesn’t feel fake to him, it feels like Lucy is the only real thing he’s ever known). Lucy who holds his hand when he cries and tells her _my dad hit me and I didn’t know what to do_.

Lucy makes him want to be a better person.

And so when Mason—when Mason says that one of them is from the Bad Place, and that’s why everything is forking up, when he says that one of them is ruining it all—Wyatt can’t let Lucy go down with him. He can’t let her suffer for something that’s his fault. And he hates—he hates the look he knows will happen on Flynn’s face, the look of shock and betrayal, but he has to.

And if he says it, maybe—maybe Rufus won’t get found out. And then Rufus can stay, and be with Jiya, because he and Jiya love each other.

Mason calls an assembly out on the green, and Wyatt grips Lucy’s hand tightly. “Hey, Lucy?”

“Yes?”

“You like Flynn.”

Lucy’s face goes bright red, the way it always does when Flynn walks up and tries to tell her she looks radiant and then ends up stumbling and saying “you look… no less… um, you look good” instead because Flynn is smooth with everyone except for Lucy.

“It’s okay,” Wyatt tells her. “I’m glad. You can look after each other.”

Lucy’s eyes get wide and she turns to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“You were the best soulmate ever,” he tells her, because it’s true. Who else would be so patient and teach him right from wrong, listen as he dumped all his bullshit on her and then help him realize it and help him learn how to fix himself, how to improve himself and become someone maybe, hopefully, worthy to be around?

He stands up and clears his throat. “Mason?” he says. “It’s me.”

Mason stares at him like he’s frozen. Flynn’s jaw drops.

“I’m the glitch,” Wyatt announces. “I’m the one who belongs in the Bad Place.”

 

* * *

 

“This is unprecedented,” Mason informs Wyatt, back in his office. “We’ve never had a glitch like this before. There must be someone that you replaced in the Good Place, which is extra concerning. We don’t want people in the Bad Place who don’t deserve it.”

“That’s… that’s not good.”

“We’ll have to review your file. Jiya!”

Jiya appears, looking…

Well…

Wyatt doesn’t want to judge but she looks a little rumpled. In a. Not-so-PG kind of way.

“Hello!” Jiya says. She looks at Wyatt. “I should inform you that I am slightly malfunctioning. Apparently experiencing my version of an orgasm fries my circuits a little.”

Mason looks like he’s in physical pain and Wyatt suspects this is not the first time Jiya has announced this fact. “We’ll make do. I would like Wyatt Logan’s file please.”

Jiya beams. “Sure thing. I can get that for you. I think.”

“You think? Or you’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

It’s right about then that Wyatt notices there are a lot of tiny cacti around the room that weren’t there before.

“Jiya,” Mason says. “Please hand me Wyatt’s file.”

“I have it.”

Mason gives her a very tired look. “Is that Wyatt’s file? Or is that a cactus?”

“It is Wyatt’s file.”

“So you are going to hand me Wyatt’s file and not a cactus.”

“That is correct.”

“Then give me the file!”

Jiya happily, and proudly, hands Mason a tiny potted cactus.

Mason literally bangs his head on the desk.

 

* * *

 

Lucy argues hard on Wyatt’s behalf. Wyatt isn’t surprised.

“You should have seen him when he first came here!” she says, for once not spending an hour making a decision. “He was an ash-hole! He was a chauvinistic self-centered toxic pile of mediocre middle America jerk off material!”

Wyatt takes a little bit of offense at this.

“But now—now he’s sacrificing himself so that everyone else can have a neighborhood that doesn’t glitch. He knows what’s coming for him in the Bad Place and he’s doing it anyway. He’s kind to me. He casually quote Kant at me the other day and it was the proudest day of my life!”

“That was the proudest day of your life?” Wyatt stares at her. “Lucy. Priorities.”

“Forgive me,” Mason says, “if I don’t exactly take the word of a woman who tried to write a thesis that ended up being four thousand pages long. It was pure drudgery to read, Lucy. Pure. Drudgery. I have all of eternity to read it and I gave up. I now truly understand boredom. Because you couldn’t pick a single topic! You just had to cover everything!”

“Well I’m not meandering now!” Lucy replies. “I’m standing firm on this. Wyatt is a good person and he deserves a second chance!”

And he’s not too surprised that Rufus defends him. Even if Rufus in the process ends up admitting he’s not supposed to be in the Good Place either and Mason looks like he wants to throw himself out the window into the great abyss.

Flynn, however, that  _is_ a surprise.

“Did Wyatt lie? Yes.” Flynn nods. “But Wyatt’s my—he’s—he’s not perfect but none of us are.”

“Actually anything in the universe can be up to 104% perfect,” Mason corrects. “That’s how we got Beyoncé.”

Flynn rolls his eyes. “The point is, Wyatt has shown me nothing but kindness and friendship and—” Flynn has a coughing fit. “And I don’t think any of that was a lie.”

“Thanks,” Wyatt tells him, later. Feeling wrong footed because Flynn is looking at him all sad and soft.

“Yes, well. I haven’t been this upset since my good friend Taylor was rudely upstaged by my other friend, Kanye, who was defending my best friend, Beyoncé.” Flynn clears his throat. “Why didn’t you—why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“Would you have still wanted to spend time with me if you knew?” Wyatt asks. “You with your… famous friends, being with—being _friends_ with—someone who was supposed to end up in the Bad Place? I mean you heard Lucy, I wasn’t exactly a great catch. Romantically or platonically.”

“I… I can see why you thought that,” Flynn admits. “But I would’ve still… and I could’ve helped you. One of my shyest friends—I won’t say his name out of respect for his privacy—but he found my presence so comforting he asked me to cohost his show _Anderson Cooper 360_.”

“I did it!” Mason announces, poking his head out of his office. “I found the person you replaced! Somehow system switched you because your first name and last name are the same as her last name and first name.”

“Run that by me one more time?” Wyatt asks.

That’s how they’re all introduced to Logan Wyatt.

She’s tall, stunning, a redhead, and Wyatt hates her on the spot even though he knows he shouldn’t because she’s apparently this orphan-and-dog-saving angel, but she’s looking at Lucy like Lucy’s the canary and she’s the cat, and Wyatt can feel Flynn bristling next to him.

“Lucy,” Mason informs her, “this is your actual soulmate.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” Logan says, and she kisses Lucy’s hand, and Lucy gets all fluttery, and Wyatt’s pretty sure if he was holding a pencil he’d snap it in half.

Next to him, Flynn looks like he is slowly cataloguing all the ways he can murder Logan. Slowly. Painfully. In graphic detail.

Wyatt knows it’s selfish, but he can’t help himself. They’re all put in his ‘dream home’ which is really Logan Wyatt’s dream home, and told to wait.

Rufus does not wait. Rufus goes to hold hands with Jiya by the lake. Because this might be his last evening with her and well, Wyatt can’t blame him.

Logan is getting herself acquainted with the neighborhood.

So Wyatt takes his moment.

“Lucy.” He takes her hands. His heart is pounding. “Listen. I know that this is kind of the wrong moment but. Um. I don’t think you should be with Logan. She isn’t right for you. You deserve not this perfect soulmate person but someone who’s really been there to see your flaws and to take time to know you. You deserve to be with someone who really knows—knows that you will talk for hours about moral relativism and that you can recite all the presidents of the United States in order backwards and that you snore a little at night, and that you’re patient and you do this adorable giggle when I quote philosophy correctly, and that you’re surprisingly jacked—and holy shit I’m in love with you.”

Lucy stares at him. “Sorry did you just figure that out while you were talking out loud?”

“…yeah um. Sorry? I was just—I just wanted to tell you—and I know I’m not allowed to tell people how to live their lives, so I felt bad, but she just seems, off, to me, she doesn’t seem—to be what you really need. I thought I was going to end this by saying you should be with Flynn.”

“What!?” Lucy looks even more confused than before and her face is turning an alarming shake of green.

The front door bursts open and Flynn hurries in. “Sorry—I’m sorry, I just—this is awful timing but Lucy I have to talk to you.”

“Oh no,” Lucy says faintly.

“Lucy.” Flynn looks like he’s about to fling himself off a cliff. “I know that you don’t deserve for me to burden you with my emotions, but I have to be honest with you. You are the light of my life. Every moment with you is like I’m finally breathing fresh air. You’ve given my life meaning again—I mean, we’re dead, so I suppose not my actual life, but metaphorically speaking—I struggle with faith, with the idea of God, of a higher power, but, if there is one, I feel like He led me to you. I love you.”

“Okay,” Wyatt holds up a finger. “His love declaration was way better than mine, can I get a do over?”

Lucy looks rather like she’s being repeatedly run over by a train. “I am going to go outside for some fresh air,” she declares faintly. “And I will not be back for many days.”

With that, she all but flees out the door.

“You… told her how you feel?” Flynn asks.

Wyatt nods. “Stupid, I know.”

“No, it’s not. Lucy—I mean, anyone can see how she looks at you.”

Wyatt snorts and collapses onto the clown-patterned couch (what the hell is Logan Wyatt’s thing with clowns? Is this a fetish?). “Yeah, right, clearly you’re not seeing how she looks at you.”

“…she looks at both of us?”

Wyatt shrugs. “I guess so? But look, man, she’s going to choose you. I know Lucy’s not good at choosing things but I think it’s a pretty cut and dried case here.”

Flynn sits down next to him on the couch. “Look. My brother was fourteen years older than I was. He got out of the house and away from my father as soon as he could, and he became—hugely famous. I mean. Big. Far bigger than I ever was. And my father—he hated that I wasn’t some prodigy as well. He lavished praise on Gabriel and only ever compared me unfavorably to him. I don’t know if he thought it would motivate me, or what. But it just made me—obsessed with besting Gabriel. All the good in the world that I did wasn’t for the people I was helping. It was to one-up my brother and give my father the middle finger.

“And then I get here, and suddenly—you didn’t recognize my brother’s name. Neither did Lucy. And you two—were funny, and kind, and spent time with me. Just for my sake. Not to get close to me so you could use me to get to Gabriel. And I don’t care what Mason or the algorithms say. You’ve become a good person and you’ve been good to me. So no, I don’t think it’s cut and dried, and I don’t think that—in this case, I don’t think that Lucy has to choose.”

Wyatt looks up at Flynn. “What do you mean? Share her?”

Flynn stares at him for a moment. “Y’know, you’re lucky you’re pretty, because sometimes I think what we say goes in one ear and right out the other.”

“Yeah, Lucy would agree, she— _mmph_.”

The rest of what he was going to say is cut off as Flynn—Flynn _kisses_ him.

And Wyatt could say that he doesn’t like men.

He could shove Flynn off and say something scathing. Bury his feelings down deep. Pretend it was disgusting to him.

But he—he wants to be better than that. And he’s possibly about to go down to the Bad Place and be tortured for eternity.

So he doesn’t do any of those things.

He just kisses back.

(Okay, so he also says, "Hot diggity dog!" and then realizes that is now going to always be the thing that he said right after Flynn kissed him, and oh God he's turned into a nerd, but you know what, he's okay with that.)

 

* * *

 

The situation has gotten… slightly out of control.

Mason’s boss, some old fart by the name of Cahill, has come down to oversee things now and judge. Lucy has insisted she go down in Wyatt’s place, Flynn has insisted he go down in Lucy’s place if she’s going to replace Wyatt, there’s still the matter of Rufus, and now Mason’s informed them that fine, _fine_ , if they’re so determined, he’ll just go into the other room while the four of them hash out which two of them will go to the Bad Place, and they’d better hurry up about it, because the train to take them to the Bad Place is going to be arriving any second.

 _Oh my God,_ Wyatt thinks. He’s watching his best friend and the two people he’s in love with fight over who’s going to the Bad Place and frankly he doesn’t want any of them to go, but he sure as hell doesn’t want to go, and…

“Holy motherforking shirtballs,” he blurts out.

Everyone stops and stares as he grabs Lucy’s hand. “Okay, Mason! Cahill!”

The two men emerge from the other room as Wyatt leads Lucy over. “We’ve decided. It’s Lucy and me. We’re going. We’re the ones.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Flynn says. “No, no you—”

“Trust me on this,” Wyatt hisses over his shoulder. He looks back at Mason. “It’s us. We’re going.”

“But—” Jiya starts, but Wyatt shakes his head.

“I said, no. We’re the ones. We’re going. So! Call up the train to the Bad Place. Go on. Do it.”

Mason kind of just stares, dumbfounded.

Wyatt grins. “I thought so. There is no train to the Bad Place. It’s never coming. It can’t come. Why? Because it can’t take us to the Bad Place when we’re already here.”

Lucy inhales sharply as Wyatt gestures around them with his free hand, eyes still locked with Mason. “This is the Bad Place!”

For a moment, everyone just stares, including Mason.

And then Mason and Cahill burst out in hysterical, most definitely demonic, laughter.

“I’m shocked you figured it out, Wyatt!” Mason says as he tries to catch his breath. “I really am—what gave it away?”

“I was standing here just now watching us all argue over who had to sacrifice themselves to go, and I thought… man, this is _torture_. And that was when it hit me.”

Mason applauds sarcastically. “Well, whoop-de-forking-doo for you.”

And that’s how they find out Mason’s big, creative plan:

Take four people, stick them in a fake Good Place neighborhood run by a Good Place Jiya that he stole from the _real_ Good Place, and then let the four of them torture each other for eternity.

“Everyone else in here was a demon,” he admits. “Including Logan.”

Logan Wyatt’s real name is Emma, and she’s annoyed that her part was cut so short.

“I am a Ferrari!” Emma declares. “You do not keep a Ferrari in the garage! I had Logan Wyatt down to a _science_ , she was a _masterpiece_ , and you brought me in at the last minute and barely—”

Wyatt kind of tuned her out at that point to be honest.

“But you…” Mason grins at him, shaking his head. “You volunteering yourself as the glitch to save Lucy, now that—that was a twist! But it’s all going to be over now.”

“Over?” Flynn asks. He moves to stand between Wyatt and Lucy and Mason, like he thinks somehow, as a mere mortal, he’s got a chance against a reality-altering demon.

“Oh yes. Time to reset you and start the game over again!”

Wyatt isn’t telepathic, but he looks at Rufus and thinks with all of his might, _distract him_.

Rufus, bless him, understands Wyatt’s face (Wyatt probably just looks constipated but whatever, his message got across), and he starts creating a big stink at Mason, and Wyatt turns to Jiya.

He snatches a piece of paper from one of Lucy’s morality lectures, and a pencil, and scribbles down a quick message, then tells Jiya to open wide.

“When we reset,” he whispers, “give this to me.”

And he sticks the piece of paper in her mouth.

“That’s enough!” Mason roars. “This was fun, but it’s time we got you back to, shall we say, factory settings.”

He snaps his fingers.

And it all goes white.

 

* * *

 

Mason has been having a bad day.

Make that a bad… few weeks.

First, Wyatt pulled that clever trick with the note in Jiya’s mouth, which read _Find Lucy_. Wyatt’s white trash but he’s not as dumb as he often acts, and Mason has to give him props for figuring out that Mason would separate the four of them on the next loop and not let Wyatt near Lucy, the person who taught him how to be good.

So, Mason has to reset things again.

But somehow Wyatt keeps. Figuring. Things out.

“Loop 342,” Mason says. “I’ve reset things again, after I accidentally sat on the reset button two minutes into the last loop. Wyatt is back in my office, with no clue that he’s really in the Bad Place…”

“Sorry,” Wyatt says from the doorway.

Mason looks up.

Wyatt clears his throat. “The, uh, office door was open, sorry, did you just say I’m in the Bad Place?”

Mason sighs, snaps his fingers, and has to begin again.

If Cahill finds out that he’s been doing this badly and that the humans keep learning the secret, he’ll be retired for sure. His soul would be disintegrated, and each molecule placed on the surface of a different burning sun. And then his essence would be scooped out of his body with a flaming ladle and poured over hot diamonds.

It’s something he’d like to avoid.

To make matters worse, Emma seems to be staging a coup. And frankly? Mason is inclined to let her.

He likes Rufus, for one thing. He likes Rufus greatly. He gets weird… paternal feelings for Rufus. He feels proud when Rufus does something well. It’s very odd.

And he kind of likes how plucky Lucy is, and how Wyatt keeps trying to be good, and Flynn is the only one who can match Mason’s levels of nihilistic sass. One time Mason listened to too many of Lucy’s ethics lectures and said that birth was a curse and existence was a prison and Flynn responded with a deadpan, “Mood,” without looking up from the book he was reading.

So maybe… maybe he should let Emma stage her coup. And then while she’s busy with that, do something to help the humans.

Of course, this means informing them the truth.

They do not take this well.

“You’ve been torturing us!?” Rufus yells.

Mason waves his hands airily. “Let’s not get all caught up on who or which one of us created an entire fake reality in order to cause eternal misery for the others. That’s ancient history.”

Lucy stares at him. “…it was happening until twenty seconds ago.”

“The point is,” Mason tells them, “you need my help. To get to the one person who can overturn your sentence.”

“Who’s that?” Lucy asks. “God?”

Mason laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous. No, the Judge. She’s arbitrated the case on Michelle St. Cloud and she’ll look at yours, if you can get to her.”

“How can we do that?” Wyatt asks. “This place is crawling with demons that hate us, _apparently_.”

“Simple: I create a distraction, then you get on the train station, and have Jiya use it to take you to the Medium Place. That’s where Michelle lives. You see, we couldn’t decide if Michelle should go to the Bad Place or the Good Place, so we created a special Medium Place just for her. She’s had a… well…”

Flynn rolls his eyes. “Spit it out, Mason.”

“She’s had a _thing_ with the Judge ever since. Michelle can get you an audience with her.”

“So you want us to go to Michelle’s so Michelle will get us in with her girlfriend,” Flynn clarifies.

“…basically.”

Mason waits in hope as the humans confer quietly to themselves. At one point he overhears Wyatt say, “I think we can trust him,” to which Lucy asks him why, and Wyatt says, “he’s wearing a bowtie. I always trust dudes in bow ties. One time when I was running away from my dad after I drove his car into the lake, this dude in a bow tie came up to me at the gun range in the bus station and said he’d give me six hundred bucks if I took this moonshine and brought it across the border. So I hotwired a car, crossed the Mexican border with it, and the guy paid me six hundred bucks.”

That’s when Lucy slaps him.

Lightly.

At last, though, the humans finish conferencing, and they return. “What’s your answer?” Mason asks.

Everyone looks at Lucy.

Lucy stands resolute. “Our answer is yes.”

 

* * *

 

Wyatt has to admit, Michelle St. Cloud is not what he pictured. She’s gorgeous, and dressed like she belongs in the film _Wall Street_ , and seems to be making weird nudge-nudge jokes about him and Lucy and Flynn.

Which… doesn’t make sense. Sure, he clearly knows them from past loops, but he doesn’t remember any of it. What is she getting at?

Rufus and Jiya are out on the porch—and Wyatt feels a bit envious of Rufus, because Jiya always remembers him, and always tells him she loves him, and apparently Wyatt can’t remember being friends with any of these people or being a good person through them.

Lucy’s upstairs, napping. Making decisions gives her migraines. And Flynn is out back trying to come to terms with the truth that he is wearing off-the-rack pants and liking it.

“So who are you, exactly?” Wyatt asks as Michelle puts a video tape into her television VCR (gee, when was the last time he saw one of those) and hands him a lukewarm beer.

That’s the thing here. The compromise. Her favorite beer, but always warm. Things like that. Neither good nor bad, just… mediocre.

“You mean why am I here?” Michelle asks, sitting next to him. She has a warmth to her that Wyatt likes. “So I was this hotshot corporate lawyer in the 1980s. I only cared about making money and doing cocaine. One night, I had an epiphany, right? I needed to do something good with my life. So I drew up plans for this foundation that would help kids all over the world, would advance human rights, revolutionize agriculture, and just improve every nation and every society in every possible way.”

“…you were pretty coked up, huh?”

Michelle grins. “Oh yeah, man, I was flying high. It was so awesome.” Her smile fades. “And then—then I got hit by a truck, that night. Walking home, didn’t see him, I was too high. But—my sister found the plans for my foundation in my jacket pocket. She used the money I left behind to start it. That foundation’s done a lot of good. Helped millions of people.”

“So the question,” Wyatt says slowly, “was whether you were responsible for all that good or not.”

“Exactly.” Michelle nods. “They debated forever. Eventually stuck me here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not so bad. I get to see Denise. First person I ever really loved, outside of my sister.” Michelle hits play on the video. “That’s why I’m showing you this.”

Wyatt turns—and freezes.

It’s him. Him and Lucy and Flynn.

They’re in a bed that Wyatt doesn’t recognize. Flynn’s curled up behind him, asleep, his arm draped over Wyatt’s waist. Lucy’s curled up at Wyatt’s chest, their foreheads pressed together.

“Lucy?” the Wyatt on the video whispers.

“Mm? Yeah?”

The Wyatt on the video is clutching Flynn’s hand very tightly, it looks like. “Is it okay if I tell you—I love you?”

Lucy smiles, bright as day and reaches up to draw her thumb softly across Wyatt’s cheek. “Yeah, it’s okay. I love you too. We both love you.”

The video cuts out.

Wyatt nearly drops his lukewarm beer. “Where—where did you—”

“That’s my bedroom,” Michelle says. “From the thirty-fifth time you were here.”

Wyatt wrenches his eyes away from the video to stare at her. “How long—I mean how many—what?”

“Why do you think Mason knew to send you here?” Michelle says. “You’ve escaped here to me, with your friends, dozens of times. You and the big guy and the neurotic would always end up being all canoodly and mushy with love declarations. But then you’d come back to me again and have forgotten it all. And I got kind of tired of that nonsense so I recorded it to show you. Now you can just skip right to the canoodling.”

Wyatt’s heart skips a beat. “But why did it never succeed before, going to you?”

“Because Mason would get you back. But he’s on your side now, you told me.” Michelle tips her head to the side. “He’s taking a real risk, you know. Probably fighting off the other demons as we speak.”

“I—”

Michelle stands, an odd light in her eyes. “That’s Denise. I can sense her. She’ll open a portal in a second. Get the others.”

Wyatt doesn’t know what to do with himself when he gets Lucy and Flynn. He loves them but he doesn’t at the same time. It’s more like he wants to love them. Wants the chance to love them. To be someone they could love back, because he was, not just once, but several times. He wants to be that person for them again and stay that way this time.

Rufus says goodbye to Jiya—she’s not allowed, just the humans petitioning.

The portal opens, and Michelle waves them off as they step through.

 

* * *

 

Denise is… about what Wyatt thought she’d be. Stern, firm, but not unkind.

She says she’ll consider their plight, and consider taking them to the Good Place, if they each pass a test.

The catch: they have to each pass their own test alone.

Wyatt’s not sure it’s entirely fair, but he doesn’t see what choice they have.

Lucy’s led into another room. So is Flynn. So is Rufus.

Leaving Wyatt by himself.

A moment later, he’s still waiting for Denise to assign him, and Lucy bursts back in. “Wyatt!”

She flies at him, wrapping her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “I passed! I passed! C’mon, let’s go.”

She grabs his hand and starts to drag him towards a portal, presumably a good place portal.

Wyatt halts. “Whoa, what are you doing?”

Lucy frowns. “We’re going to the Good Place.”

“Without the others? Without Flynn?” Wyatt’s seen how she looks at him. Even if she doesn’t love Wyatt, even if she might not ever in this loop, she’s already starting to fall for Flynn, and Flynn for her.

“I want you,” Lucy says, squeezing his hand, and it’s everything Wyatt’s ever wanted, this beautiful whip smart girl telling him she wants to go to paradise with him, and forget all the rest, but…

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re not really Lucy. This isn’t ethical or moral or anything like that! You haven’t spent an hour debating the pros and cons!”

He looks over at Denise, who is standing at her judge’s bench, watching silently. “This is my test. And I’m not buying it. I go with my friends or I don’t go at all.”

The Lucy in front of him vanishes, and Denise slow claps. “Well done, Mr. Logan. But I’m afraid you are wrong about one thing.”

“What?”

Denise shrugs. “You passed your test, but you will be going to the Good Place alone.”

She snaps her fingers and the other three reappear. Denise points at Lucy. “All you had to do was choose which road to take in the car. You spent the whole time wondering which and never made a choice.”

She points at Flynn. “I told you, walk down the hallway and go through the door at the end. Don’t go into any of the rooms, no matter who’s talking about you in them. And you entered the one with your father and brother and you confronted them over their behavior towards you.”

Finally, she points at Rufus. “I told you to play on your hated team Rittenhouse against your favorite sports team. But you never realized that you didn’t have to play at all. The real test was to refuse.”

“Okay but wait,” Wyatt says. “Wait, this is bullshit!” Oh, wow, he can curse again! That feels  _amazing_.

Denise’s eyes flash. “Excuse me?”

“Those tests were bullshit,” Wyatt says, stepping up, putting himself in between Flynn, Rufus, and Lucy. He can see the irony here—he passed and now he, the person who always put himself first, is putting everyone else ahead of him and possibly giving up his chance at the Good Place—but he doesn’t care. “Flynn confronted his father and his brother, he got catharsis. Rufus was never told he couldn’t play, you deliberately phrased it so it sounded like he didn’t have a choice—and frankly, uh, I mean I know I’m a white guy saying this but c’mon when are black people ever told they can’t play the game, if you know what I mean? And Lucy—Lucy was in a car crash, she nearly died, she plunged into the river! You’re all knowing, you had to know that would panic her, that she’d wonder which road would take her back to that place. You set them up to fail!”

Denise folds her arms. “So you’re saying that you all should get to go to the Good Place?”

“Yes.” Wyatt nods. “Yes. Because—look, I used to think—I was an asshole, and I thought that the Good Place was a state of being that I could reach. That if I was the toughest, most badass guy in the room, that I was happy. That if I could drink all I wanted, and get any girl I waned, that I was happy. That if I did all the things and was all the things that the world told me a man had to be, that I was happy.

“But I’m happy when this—this ridiculously nerdy woman smiles at me and tells me that the proudest day of her life is when I casually quote Kant in a conversation. I’m happy when this over-dramatic pile of sass actually laughs at something I said or when he calls me puppy—and Flynn if you ever mention I said that again—”

“Your secret’s safe with me, puppy.” Flynn’s smirk makes Wyatt annoyingly warm all over. Dammit.

“And when Rufus first called me his best friend I think that was the best moment of my life.” Oh, wait. “Besides when Lucy and Flynn told me they loved me. That’s number one. But Rufus telling me I’m his best friend is number two because Rufus is honestly the best person I’ve ever met in my life. He just—does the right thing.

“My point is—my point is that these people are my Good Place. And I’m not going to be happy until they’re with me. So I’m not going anywhere.” Wyatt reaches back, hoping—and is rewarded when Lucy and Flynn each slip a hand into one of his. “Not without them.”

Denise looks like she wants to sarcastically slow clap. “Wyatt…”

“Wait!”

Mason bursts in, Jiya hot on his heels. “Judge, sorry, sorry but I need to speak with you for a moment.”

Denise looks like she’d pop an aspirin if she thought it would help. “Yes, Mason?”

“Mason!” Lucy beams. “You’re all right!”

“Rufus?” Jiya runs right over, and Rufus pulls her in for a hug, kissing the top of her head.

“Judge, there is a massive mistake that you’re making here. If I’m right, then the system by which we judge humans, the very method we use to deem them good or bad is so fundamentally flawed and unreasonable that hundreds of millions of people have been wrongly condemned to an eternity of torture.”

Denise blinks. “I admit, that gave me goosebumps.”

“While wrongfully in the Good Place, all four of these people improved. Rufus I admit didn’t need a lot of improving. If you look at his file, he’s getting bad points for doing things like sending roses to his mother when the flowers come from a company that exploits workers—how is he supposed to know that? Capitalism has made it impossible for him to make an ethical choice!

“But the other three—they all grew. I watched them. They became better people together. Lucy was a basket case of indecision and subservient to everyone. Because of Wyatt and Flynn she was railing in my office demanding I give him another chance and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Flynn stopped thinking about himself and who he could befriend that would make him look good and instead fell in love with two people for who they were, simply because he wanted to be with them. Wyatt was a complete failure. A cardboard cutout had more depth than he did.”

“Thanks, Mason.”

“And now he thinks of other people. He was just now willing to sacrifice his place because you wouldn’t bring the others with him. He’s organized this entire thing to save the people he cares about.” Mason’s eyes are gleaming. “You see? They’re _changing_. They’re _growing_. Because of each other. Because they’re thinking about what is best for one another.”

A light comes on in Denise’s eyes. “So what you’re saying is…”

Mason nods. “Yes.”

“What’s happening?” Wyatt asks. He holds on tightly to Lucy and Flynn.

“To quote Vonnegut, there’s only one rule,” Mason says as Denise walks up to them. “Lucy, you did have the answer.”

“I did?” Lucy blinks. “In my four thousand page—”

“No,” Mason says, rolling his eyes. “I did not have to lie about that, your magnum opus was ridiculous, my dear. No, in what you’re always saying to us.”

“What are you doing,” Wyatt says, shrinking into Flynn as Denise’s hand starts to glow.

“It’s what we owe to each other,” Mason says, as suddenly Wyatt can’t see, as it’s just a bright light, as all he can feel are Flynn and Lucy’s hands gripped tightly in his. “That’s how we should’ve been looking at it. What do we owe to each other?”

Everything goes white.

 

* * *

 

“Jiya wants to go down to earth,” Mason notes. “She’s rebooted 802 times. She’s… more human than anything else.”

“Her powers wouldn’t work on Earth,” Denise notes, finally finishing her burrito. “I suppose, if she wants… if you think she’s really become properly… human…”

“I think I have too,” Mason admits. “I think being human is the thing we all should be trying to be.”

Denise looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Well. We’ll see how they do. How everyone does.”

“They have each other,” Mason points out. “I know they’ll find their way.”

 

* * *

 

The office nameplate is simple. _Dr. Lucy Preston: Ethics and Moral Philosophy_

Wyatt tries the door, finds it unlocked, knocks as he opens it.

Lucy Preston is dark haired, dark eyed, with a sharp, angled face and a wide, expressive mouth. She’s beautiful.

“Hey. Uh.” Wyatt gives an awkward wave. “Dr. Preston? I’m Wyatt Logan, we spoke on the phone.”

“Oh, right, from San Diego.” Lucy smiles warmly. “Come in, please sit down.”

He moves to do so, and hears someone entering behind him. “Dr. Preston?”

Wyatt turns around. The man entering looks not so much confused as wary, sporting a soft dark red turtleneck and long black pants that look tailored even though it is very much summer outside. He’s also handsome as fuck.

This has to be Garcia Flynn.

“Sorry I’m late,” Flynn says. “Flight was delayed.”

“I’m at my lunch break, actually,” Lucy says. “Why don’t we step outside and discuss this special program over yogurt?”

The idea of doing this over frozen yogurt is, for some reason, incredibly funny to him. He has to smother a grin. “Sure.”

Flynn nods, just the once.

They go outside, and they sit, and something sparks in his fingertips, in his spine, in his stomach when Flynn pulls out the chair for him, and when Lucy’s foot brushes his under the table.

Wyatt Logan is not a good person.

But he knows that, somehow, these two people are going to help him become one.


End file.
